Project 4 Reflection

This project has been interesting for me because I feel like some strengths of mine were brought out while at the same time I had many weaknesses challenged. Throughout the planning phase (doing the interviews, coming up with the task list, making the wireframes, and coming up with project ideas) I felt very at home and was really enjoying myself. While I did need to expand my ideas a bit and tweak my task list to fit the goals of the class, up through the wireframes I still felt very confident about the outcome of the project.

When working on the visual fragments, I have simply had the same problems that I have had throughout the class so far – trying to remember photoshop techniques, paying attention to subtle hierarchical details in the type, and avoiding awkward negative space. I do feel like, however, that I have improved since the previous projects, as I was able to jump into the design of the fragments more quickly, and was able to push myself to come up with varied ideas.

When it came to designing the final comps, however, I began to struggle a lot more. One mistake that I made on the wireframes is that I assumed the iPhone screen could fit more text/buttons on it than it actually could. When making the final comps, I was forced to pick various text blocks and features to leave out of the final design. While I still was able to produce a useful application, I ended up having to cut out some features that I would have preferred to leave in the application.

I also struggled with running behind in this project. Early on in the project I got sick, and while I am mostly better now, I did not get caught up on all my work quickly enough. While this was fine in that I was eventually able to get all my work done, I missed out on several class critique sessions, which I know have been extremely valuable so far in helping my designs turn out with better color choice, better feature integration, and better management of sizing and use of negative space. While I was still able to create a project that I was satisfied with, I will work very hard to make sure I am ready for class critiques on the next project, because that help is extremely valuable for me.